Never Forgotten | Wykeham Journal

£690K

was spent on the ancient buildings last year.

Most of the cloister has weathered its first century well but the paint has become, as Josephine Walton puts it, ‘dishevelled’. Half a century of exposure has taken its toll. The last restoration was done in the 1960s and now needs to be repeated. Josephine is the manager of the team from Sally Strachey Conservation dealing with repainting. They worked out which mix of paint and which method of application would last best. They have then patiently repainted every one of the 785 names and principal coats of arms in the cloister. Her work takes her all over the country and often means a working-week away from home. Before War Cloister Josephine had been working on the conservation of Manchester Town Hall.

There are no colour records from the 1920s and the stripping of the paint in the 1960s was very thorough. ‘We’re reproducing the original as best we know how,’ said Josephine. ‘We have reworked historic repairs where lettering has been altered but we have always honoured what was there.’ Those ‘historic repairs’ were a handful of corrections made where the 1924 version was adjusted in the light of later information: an officer’s rank, say, or the location of a death. One can’t help noticing on the stones that a very few parents lumbered their sons with odd middle names. It’s hard to believe that Wykehamists of more than a hundred years ago would have liked to have ‘Umpherston’ or ‘Undecimus’ included in their names any more than they would now.

512.00

OWs Fell in WW1

273.00

OWs Fell in WW11

One could see,when one had admired, how it will weather and how it will arrange itself a hundred years hence”, Kipling wrote to the cloister’s architect, Herbert Baker.

£1M

was the cost of the conservation project

Every Wykehamist who fell in the First and Second World Wars is listed. In the early 20^th century the school had some 450 pupils, and 512 Wykehamists died between 1914 and 1918. The names have no hierarchy: they are arranged by year of arrival in the school and within that in alphabetical order. ‘I think that’s very special,’ said Josephine. ‘No distinctions in death.’ Biographical details of all Wykehamists who died in service from 1782 to the late 20^th century can be found on the Winchester at War website.

The only medals highlighted in red in the cloister are the three posthumous Victoria Crosses. The youngest of those was Denis Hewitt (G, 1911-15), a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment, who died on the opening morning of the third battle of Ypres (better known as Passchendaele), 31 July 1917. He was 18.

The citation for Hewitt’s VC included this description of the attack on a village called St Julien: ‘While waiting for the barrage to lift he was hit by a piece of shell, which exploded the signal flares in his haversack and set fire to his equipment and clothes. Having extinguished the flames (by rolling in the mud) in spite of his wound and the severe pain he was suffering, he led forward the remains of the Company under very heavy machine gun fire, and captured and consolidated his objective. The battalion cleared the trenches and set up machine guns to defend it. At this point Hewitt was killed, shot through the head by a sniper. He died instantly … This gallant officer set a magnificent example of coolness and contempt of danger to the whole battalion, and it was due to his splendid leading that the final objective of his battalion was gained.'

It took me some time to take in the responsibility of taking all this paint off,’ Josephine said; ‘I got very interested in the story it tells; I do feel very privileged to be working on this. And it’s got to go back right. I’ve become quite protective. It means so much to so many.’ The removal of the paint reveals how beautiful the original stone carving was. Josephine’s team all admired the ingenuity and skill with which those carving the letters made them all fit. Heraldic creatures occasionally throw up fresh decisions. The lions have been given back their traditional blue tongues and claws. The arms of the allied and Commonwealth nations are all in the cloister and the head of the American bald eagle will remain black rather than the normal white. Pictures taken before the 1960s restoration show it black, so it stays that way.

The author of a book on the school described War Cloister as a “single act of faith commemorating countless acts of faith”.

The Headmaster who began War Cloister was Monty Rendall, who was determined that the memorial should lie on the everyday walking route from the Commoner Boarding Houses to classrooms. The final cost by 1924 was £65,000 (around £4.8m now) all funded by donations from Wykehamists. The donors also insisted that the Warden and Fellows find separate funds to pay for the education of the son of any Wykehamist killed in the war who wished to come to the school. The cloister remains the largest private war memorial in Europe. The author of a book on the school described War Cloister as ‘a single act of faith commemorating countless acts of faith’.

The Act of Remembrance takes place there each year on a Sunday in November. War Cloister makes permanent the peaceful recall of Wykehamists who died amid horrifying carnage; it embodies the sacrifice of service. As Josephine Walton said, ‘It’s a humbling thing to see.’

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